Wednesday, 30 July 2025

Victorian Auditor-General’s Office

Work‐related Violence in Government Schools

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:39): When I began my career in education – embarrassingly enough, in the 1990s – the key role of teachers was to help students learn and significant time was given to instruction. But today we find that teachers – and they did this in the past, and I did this in the past too – are operating as counsellors and mentors, and in some cases now teachers are even having to operate as security guards within their classrooms.

The report Work-Related Violence in Government Schools tabled in May 2025 shows that after a decade of Labor – in fact we have actually had 12 years of Labor – classrooms are no longer just a place of learning. They have become a front line for forceful and violent behaviour in some cases. Since Labor has been in government, work-related violence from student behaviour rose by nearly 47 per cent annually between the financial years of 2015, when they came into power, and 2024. If we look at the results here, the department has recorded OH&S incidents involving government school staff, which grew from 8908 incidents in 2014–15 to 30,675 in 2023–24, an average 27.2 per cent increase each year. During the same period, the department has reported an average of 46.7 per cent growth in recorded incidences of work-related violence resulting from student behaviour each year, from 2279 incidences in 2014–15 to 11,858 in 2023–24. Now, if you adjust this for staff numbers and growth, this is an average of 31.4 per cent in growth.

The other issue here is that nearly 30 per cent of incidences are not included in departmental OH&S reports, exposing systemic under-recording and under-reporting. Twenty to 25 per cent of teachers feel unsafe in their workplaces. This, combined with additional administrative burdens and insufficient support and guidance, is driving teachers out of the profession. It is not the only thing driving them out of the profession, I might add, because the amount of work that teachers are having to do for preparation and the additional burdens that the government has placed on them to continually be adding things into their curriculum has made it incredibly stressful. Fortunately, there are a number of schools that have been leading the way, in spite of the government, in teaching and giving explicit instruction in the classroom so that students are actually learning, and now, finally, the government is getting on the bandwagon, realising that this is a good thing.

Rampant violence, funding cuts and a lack of transparency have become defining marks of the Allan Labor government. We are seeing the consequences of this neglect in our schools and increasingly on our streets, with at-risk students becoming serious repeat violent offenders. Now, this sort of nonsense cannot continue, and we need the government to continue to act by ensuring honest and transparent reporting so we understand the full extent of the problem and by providing proper support for teachers and seriously addressing the root causes of this violence. Violence in schools must not be treated as a minor occupational hazard. Teachers are continually leaving the profession. Many choose to be relief teachers over taking a classroom on a full-time or part-time basis because of the administrative burdens and the amount of work that is required of them when they are having to prepare lessons and also to mark the work. So we are finding more and more teachers are opting for casual relief teaching. It is simply too difficult. This government is not getting behind teachers, and it is not helping them sufficiently. We cannot expect to attract and retain high-quality teachers while turning a blind eye to the risks that they face every day. I might add that I have had the great pleasure of visiting some schools that have been using explicit instruction, and it actually curtails a lot of the distractions in the classroom and prevents violence and interactions that are unhealthy for students.